


No Insignificant Cost

by withcoffeespoons



Series: Nixa Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen, Nightmares, Past Kaidan Alenko/Commander Shepard, Post-Virmire, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: “I close my eyes to sleep, and in my dreams, he hates me.”





	

Kaidan’s arms surrounded her, warm from the inside out. His lips were warm and soft against her shoulders, pressing kisses into the line of her collarbone. His fingers traced the taut lines of her neck, teasing at the hinge of her jaw.

“Kaidan,” Nixa sighed. He touched her, and it was everything. This was where she belonged. Where they both belonged.

His fingers tightened on her throat.

Her muscles tightened, her hand gripping, panicked, at Kaidan’s wrist. Kaidan’s fingers pressed in harder, his face twisting in rage, cheeks flushed, lips curled back. Nixa gasped—tried to—kicking, legs tangled in the sheets.

“Ka—” Her voice guttered under the force of Kaidan’s thumb.

He said nothing, just snarled, a thick, mean sound in the heart of his throat.

Nixa pushed at the tightness around her throat, and found in her hands not Kaidan’s powerful grip or the warmth of his skin, but the unforgiving Alliance sheets, twisted and wrapped around her.

She struggled to hold in her panic, her fingers tight around the fabric, clutching at reality.

She was Nixa Shepard, Commander of the Normandy, first human Spectre, and Kaidan Alenko was dead.

And it was her fault.

Any breath she caught escaped in rough sobs that tore at her throat.

She sat for a few minutes before she felt discomfort bleed into her skin. The sheets under her, the bed, even the hull wasn’t the same that Kaidan touched.

Her skin wasn’t the same that Kaidan touched.

Nothing was the same, but it all felt too close, smothering her with the threat of half-mistaken memory. She had to get out, had to be anywhere but here.

She couldn’t remember wandering the corridors, couldn’t remember thinking of a destination. It was a wonder she hadn’t spaced herself out the airlock.

All things considered, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t still.

There was always someone on duty in Engineering, but third shift was a skeleton crew. No one saw her. No one heard her footsteps leading down the stairs to the quiet hideaway Jack had dug out for herself.

“What the fuck are you doing down here?”

Nixa wasn’t sure. 

“I just want to be somewhere quiet.”

“Well, find your own place. This one’s mine.”

“I just...I can’t sleep,” she offered in explanation.

“Neither can I, with you standing down here,” Jack said, her voice even more gruff than usual. “If you don’t want a more permanent solution, get out.”

Nixa sighed, staring into the angry red of the bulkhead. “Right now, Jack, I wouldn’t really care if you did it.”  _ make it quick just  _

Jack fixed her with an inscrutable, tight look—pity or disgust. The idea of Jack pitying her curdled in her stomach.

“No fun in killing someone that wants to die,” Jack concluded. “But get out, anyway. I want to sleep, and like hell I’m doing it where anyone can watch me.”

The elevator always seemed to take too long. It gave her time to think, to feel. Time enough for shame and despair to fill the air.

Coffee felt too much like giving up, so she settled for chamomile tea instead. It tasted like grass, but maybe she could trick her mind into sleeping, fool her dreams into mellow confusion, not vivid terror.

“Commander.”

Nixa startled, her biotics flaring just beneath the surface.

Thane held out his hands in silent surrender. “I apologize.”

“No,” Nixa sighed. “I’m sorry. You startled me, and I—I didn’t realize anyone else was up.”

“It is not unusual to sleep odd hours between star systems.”

“Oh, if only that was the case.” She sighed, physically weary, her shoulders heavy as though she struggled to hold herself up.

Thane hesitated. “If you would like me to leave…”

Nixa’s pulse stuttered. “No,” she croaked. “I could use the company, I think.” She drowned her embarrassment at her admission in a heavy swallow of tea.

Thane sat without a word, gentle and soundlessly. He moved with a fluidity that betrayed his training, unhaltingly confident.

“Do—you’ve been an assassin a long time,” she said, silently cursing the inanity of her observation.

“From a young age, yes,” he said without pause.

“How do you deal with it?”

If he was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it. He explained, in quiet, measured words, his battle sleep, the all-too-convenient belief that separated his soul from his actions.

Nixa interrupted as little as she could manage. Only when he was finished did she admit, “For years, I never thought about the lives I’ve ended.” She shook her head as though to clear it. “Terrorists, mercenaries, pirates, geth, monsters…it was all a part of what I was supposed to do.”

“It makes it easier to kill if your enemy is less than an individual, only the sum of their actions,” Thane said, nodding his agreement. He said it as though distanced enough from the idea that any judgment was absent from his voice. It was what she was looking for—calculated objectivity—but it left her cold.

“Now I wonder who mourns them,” she continued. “Who feels their loss.” Her words were hardly louder than her breath. “But it still doesn’t keep me from pulling the trigger.”

”What changed?” Thane asked, his eyes flashing as he blinked.

This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Someone to hear her confession? Her voice was dead and hollow when she spoke again. “I made a choice,” she said, swallowing against the lump in her throat. “And that choice got someone under my command killed.”

“Soldiers die.” Nixa’s eyes snapped to his face as Thane echoed the words, the mantra, that she had dragged with her as she rose through the ranks. “What made this one different?”

Anger rose at his ignorance, meeting her despair in the middle until they both became self-loathing. “I loved him.” The words scraped her throat so hard she was surprised she couldn’t taste blood. Tears dropped like bombs from her eyes. “I loved him and I left him to die,” she gasped, barely audible. “It—it’s my fault.”

Thane said nothing.

Nixa sniffed heavily, grasping to pull herself together. Her eyes stung with the force of emotion she fought back. She scraped at her face, her fingers catching on the still-unfamiliar scars. More evidence that she wasn’t the same person who had left Kaidan on Virmire—or perhaps she was the person that action turned her into.

“Shepard,” Thane said, something gentle in his voice. Pity? Shame crept up Nixa’s neck, hot and directionless. Thane was an assassin, a killer with a pricetag; what had she expected from him?

“I’m sorry,” she said, shutting down  _ just bury it down down down _ . She sprang awkwardly to her feet.

Thane tilted his head as though he found her reaction curious. “For what?”

Shepard shook her head. “I don’t know why I told you—I’m sorry I wasted your time,” she said, her words sharp and cold.

“You misunderstand me,” he said softly, fingers twitching. “Please, I want you to understand what it is I do. Like your defense of your people, to fulfill a contract is a matter of business—I have killed mercenaries, terrorists...monsters.”

Nixa nodded, her feet still, even as something in her wanted to run.

“This doesn’t mean I feel no remorse for the lives I’ve taken. Indeed, it is that which drives me to atone, even for those who some believe don’t deserve life in light of their actions.”

Nixa wondered where she’d fall on his moral scales. She decided she’d rather not know.

“Many of my self-recriminations are driven by those who I have failed. Innocents who would have lived, had I been faster, better.” He hesitated. “People I have cared about. What I do comes at no insignificant cost.”

Barely audible, Nixa spoke as though in confession, “I close my eyes to sleep, and in my dreams, he hates me.” Twin tears spilled over her cheeks as she shut her eyes against the judgment of Thane’s wide, black eyes. “Sometimes,” she continued, “I wake up and think the guilt is enough reason to end it all.” Her lips made a thin line, the creases in her frown connecting scar to scar across her cheeks.

“You must think I’m a fucking coward,” she said.

Thane reached for her, his fingers brushing the back of her hand. “I think you are a woman in a great deal of pain.”

Her fingers clenched, twitching for the comfort of another’s touch. Not quite holding hands, but close enough. A sob left her, followed by a ragged, shaking breath as she draw back into herself. An apology bloomed on her tongue beside a gratitude, both of them dying before they could reach her lips.

“Do you want me to leave, Shepard?” Thane asked.

Nixa thought about sleeping again, about waking, gasping, about the glint of hatred on Kaidan’s face—barely a memory, fabricated entirely in her nightmares.

She thought about Thane’s words, his open, understanding expression. The way he called her a woman, called her Shepard, not Commander.

“No?” Her voice cracked with uncertainty. “You don’t have to stay.”

Thane smiled, a slight, soft thing. “I will stay until you ask me to leave.”


End file.
